


Family Business

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Batman Beyond
Genre: Gen, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 21:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16860580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: Matt has been getting into fights lately, against the criminal element of Gotham.





	Family Business

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kasuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/gifts).



Matt looked at the drops of blood on the concrete, dripping from his nose.  Before he could push himself to his feet, he felt a boot meet his ribcage, _hard._ It knocked the wind out of him, setting him gasping for air as he tried to get away.

Maybe this hadn’t been the best plan, Matt thought as he coughed and rolled onto his back.  A few of his friend shad been mugged in this part of town, and he wanted to try to do something about it.  Terry had taught him a few tricks.  Hey, the first two Jokerz were actually out of commission—a sucker punch knocked out the first one and the other one was tough, but he managed to knock him out.  Unfortunately, he hadn’t planned for the other three who showed up from behind him.

Someone was saying something as he clutched his side, staring up at the white greasepaint of one of the Jokerz.  As his vision spun and he tried to prop himself up he saw two more thugs flank the first, an aluminum bat slung over one of their shoulders. The one with the bat, a dark haired girl in a jester cap, flashed a smile with missing teeth.  The first joker, in a long purple coat, gave a big smile and said “Really bad idea to be a hero.”

“I dunno.” A guttural voice growled, and the clowns all turned, tensed up.  “Worked out fine for me.”

Then a dark shape launched forward, tackling the lead gang member.  Blackness flashed between the bright shapes of the Jokerz gang, grunts, groans and the sound of impacts ringing in Matt’s ears before Matt collapsed back to the ground, vision going dark.

* * *

It had been a quiet night.

Terry hadn’t needed to get out of the car for the first hour of patrol—and that was for a false alarm.  The week had been quiet.  What was the cliché, ‘quiet, too quiet’?  That’s what it was.  Based on his few years of being Batman, Gotham was never quiet, unless it was about to get very, very loud.  Bruce had actually voiced that concern before Terry had the chance to.

A pack of Jokerz getting into an altercation wasn’t much, but hopefully it was enough of a crisis to dispel whatever the mounting trouble was.  A leap and a kick to the apparent ringleader.  The big guy locked up at the sight of him—did they have a run-in in the past?  There were so many branches of the Jokerz gang he couldn’t be sure.  The girl wasn’t and she came at him.

She swung wildly as he backstepped out of the way; she was swinging so wildly he wondered if she could even hit a tee ball.  She raised the bat over her head and brought it down—he sidestepped easily, and could see she wasn’t prepared for the impact of the bat hitting the concrete.  She almost lost her grip as he crossed his arms and grinned. 

The girl yelled in frustration and charged again, swinging straight for his head.  He dropped the telegraphed swing, then struck out with his right foot to the girl’s legs, unbalancing her and sending her sprawling to the pavement.  The bat clanged to ground. 

He sprang back to his feet just as the third gang member got over his fear and charged.  The punch he threw had a lot of force behind it—Terry deflected the blow and used the man’s momentum to hurl him sending him crashing on top of the girl.  She grunted and then began cursing at the big guy, name was “Brad” apparently.

“Behind you!” Bruce yelled over the radio in the cowl.  Like Terry _hadn’t_ seen the gang leader recover and make a dive for the bat.  Terry dove too, snatching it out of the man’s grasp the second he laid a hand on it, then threw it down the alley. 

Terry’s eyes narrowed, the leader shrugged and pulled his fist back to punch.  Terry’s uppercut landed on the gangster’s undefended jaw, and he was out.

The female clown was almost under the big guy when Terry stepped forward and crouched, snatching her hat off her head and wiping away some of her greasepaint.  There’d been a lot of muggings in this section of town—these guys probably played a role. 

He walked over to the prone form of the person they were beating up—a teenager who had the bad sense to pick a fight here.  He was planning on leaving, satisfied the police would show up and bring along some EMTs.  But he recognized the kid’s jacket.  He rushed over and dropped to a knee, looking at an all-to-familiar face.

“Oh no.”

* * *

Ace lounged by the chair, letting out a whine and a yawn as Bruce scratched him behind the ears.  The dog and its master’s eyes tracked Terry as he paced the room, muttering as much to himself as he did to his mentor.

“…I taught him some stuff.  Like, not anything particularly fancy, just some basic hand-to-hand.  Said I picked it up because you’re a frail old rich guy and sometimes you visit dangerous places in the city.”  

Bruce narrowed his eyes.

“…strictly to maintain cover.” Terry hastily added.  “Like, Gotham’s a dangerous place and Matt’s getting older, going out more.  I wanted him to be safe, I _didn’t_ want him to go picking fights with gangs.”

A young hothead picking fights with the Jokerz sounded _awfully_ familiar to Bruce.  If the irony was lost on Terry so be it.  “How is he?”

“He’s fine.  He’ll have to take it easy for a few days, but he’ll be fine.” Terry was fiddling with a picture on the mantlepiece, the one Bruce had of him and Zatanna back while he was still learning from Zatara.  “I’m just worried about… what happens if he keeps doing this?”

“You think he will?” Bruce said, planting both hands on the head of his cane.

“I dunno.  I just…”

“You had no idea he’d do this,” Bruce said, trying to calm his protégé.  “And like you said, he was trying to help his friends.  He takes after his brother.”

“Yeah…” Terry said with a growl.  “…worked out very well for him.”

* * *

Matt lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.  He’d been discharged from the hospital in short order—nothing broken and no concussion.  That was lucky.

Terry had brought Mom to the hospital while he was still getting checked out.  That wasn’t lucky.  Now he was grounded.  Mom hadn’t fallen for the excuse that Terry had been getting into fights when he was Matt’s age.  Terry had been laying into him for it, too.  So unfair.  Hell, he’d been in fights with the Jokerz before, and that landed him a job with Mister Wayne.

Right after Dad died.

Maybe he was hit on the head harder than he had initially thought.  Because there was absolutely no way that this could’ve made as much sense as it did if he hadn’t been hit really hard.  Because he normally wouldn’t have thought about that—Dad had been killed by the Jokerz.  Not the ones he had had problems with, but all of them were the same, weren’t they? 

Considering he was having random thoughts, he remembered an awkward moment when Terry had to drag him along to his job, then ‘step out’.  He forgot how the topic came up, but Matt—to young to realize how awkward that attempt to find common ground was--had mentioned the fact that he’d done some reading on Mister Wayne and that he lost his parents young, too.

Odd coincidence.

Like how when the Joker, alleged the original one, had reappeared, he targeted Mister Wayne.  And his gang targeted Terry—hospitalizing Dana.  They picked a fight with the old man and his gopher, even though the Joker would have a problem with Batman, rather than a retired businessman.

They lost their Dad.  Then Terry started working for Mister Wayne.  Then Batman came back.  The new Batman, he was clearly smaller than the first one.

He had to have had something knocked loose in his head, because it was crazy.  The new Batman was just a coincidence.  Even if he was about Terry’s build—vague memories of that time he was kidnapped by the Stalker and Batman rescued him came back very clearly.  He was about the same as Terry.  And news footage showed he bulked up as Terry did.

This was preposterous.

Even if while he was flickering, on the edge of consciousness, when Batman had beaten the Jokerz, he knelt down beside Matt and gasped an “Oh no.”

Matt was on his feet in a flash.  Then, finding that sudden stand up aggravated every ache and pain he had accumulated in his ill-planned crimefighting attempt, he slumped back onto the bed with a groan.  He looked at the door and grumbled.  He needed to get out of the apartment and find Terry, and have a talk.

Rubbing his back, he relaxed.  Later.  He and Terry would have that talk when his back stopped hurting.

* * *

“He knows.” Maxine said over the phone.  She couldn’t help but have a sense of unease—knowing what Terry got up to she was good at keeping her cool.  But given how he’d reacted when he found Matt had been getting into fights again, how he rambled, she had no idea how he’d take the news.

“Who knows what now?” Terry asked, tone indicating that he knew precisely the answer.

“Matt.  He _knows_.”  She did not want to tell Terry that his little brother had figured out that he was Batman over the phone.  She guessed he might’ve been able to piece things together like she did, maybe Terry’s coincidental absences, how he was connected with the reclusive billionaire.

“You sure?”  Terry said, and she gave an exasperated sigh.  Was he seriously going to play dumb with this?

“You asked me to talk to him, try to figure out what he wasn’t telling you.” For whatever reason, Terry figured that since Max was a younger sister, she would have some type of insight.  For what it was worth, she did agree to talk to him.

“And he told you that…”

“Terry, he didn’t need to.  It was obvious.”  She shut her eyes, preparing to deal with Terry asking her the same question in about fifty different ways.  Luckily she misjudged him.

“Aw jeez.”  Terry muttered.  “I’m gonna have to call Bruce.”

* * *

Terry ducked underneath the flailing, liquid limb, and scrambled behind a bank of computers for cover.  Cover that lasted only as long as it took the black liquid to slide over the top.  A batarang severed a limb that came for him, and he on the move when the second came crashing down.

Inque was back in town. 

This was _not_ a good night for this. 

He’d sent Matt to do crowd control; that was the deal they had hashed out.  Matt could come along, but only if he agreed to listen.  Bruce could shut down his suit if he put himself at unnecessary risk, and otherwise was giving Matt advice.

So it was just him and Inque.

He was rocketing down the corridor, planning on luring her towards a lab, hopefully with something that could contain her.  Something snagged his ankle, and pulled.  He crashed to floor as The limb binding him expanded; Inque shifted her mass towards him along the floor.

Before she could rear up to strike, something came flying through the air, embedding itself partially in her viscous body.  Terry slammed his eyes shut and covered his ears as the flash grenade went off—splattering Inque off of him.  Even with the cowl’s systems, his ears were ringing as he got back to his feet.

Something black and blue landed next to him.

“Thought I said for you to stay outside, Robin.”

“I thought you could use a hand.” Matt replied, adding “And it’s Nightwing.”

“Not until you strike out on your own, _old chum_.”  That last bit was a barb at Bruce’s expense.  He had to be listening in now; and Terry knew how much he hated that rock opera.

“For what it’s worth, I agreed with him.” Bruce said.  “Although it certainly looked like you had the situation well in hand, McGinnis.”

Yeah, he wasn’t going to win this argument.  Watching as Inque reformed he flicked an electrified batarang around in his hand; wouldn’t do much more than the grenade did, but between the two of them they could wear her down.  “You ready?”

He didn’t get a response as Nightwing leapt for the supervillain, pulling the pin on another grenade.  With a sigh Terry followed.


End file.
